


out of the woods

by orphan_account



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Blood, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hunger Games-Typical Death/Violence, like a lot of blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 01:50:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20107201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: He wishes he could go back to peach and violet mornings under the bare spring sun, sit and sing with Jaemin in the fields instead of wondering if every stick snapping in the wind was the last sound he’d ever hear.





	out of the woods

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song of the same name by foals
> 
> this was supposed to be a part of a longer fic, but i scrapped it and am leaving this scene on a sock account to preserve it. please heed the tags, there's nothing happy here.
> 
> thanks to j for the beta <3

He hears the sobbing long before he sees the source. It seems to echo off the treetops, bounce through the branches and entangle itself with the birdsong, come and go like waves as the direction of the wind changes. There’s a faintness filtered by distance, but it’s steady. Human, for sure. Not something he wants to hear so soon after the sound of a cannon shot. He turns to Jaemin to warn him and finds his hand covering his mouth. He can taste dirt from the bandage on his palm, slightly metallic where his dried blood has seeped through. Donghyuck shoves his arm away and shoots him a withering glare.

“Keep it,” he says, “they’ll hear us anyway.”

“It’s about principle.”

Donghyuck draws an arrow. The few that remain in his quiver rattle like rocks in a ribcage. “Whatever.”

They’ve been in the arena for six days. Of the forty-eight that were reaped for the Quarter Quell, only nine of them remain, all of them different people from those who had entered. Donghyuck hasn’t killed, directly, but Jaemin has, had driven a sword through the eye socket of the last remaining tribute from Twelve that very morning. The act still lingered bitterly in Donghyuck’s mouth, the taste like the leaves they used to chew while working with the goats back in Ten. It doesn’t have the same numbing effect on his mind, an absence he finds is a double-edged sword. One lapse of wit was enough to have him run through and bleeding out, but he wished that, just for a second, he could forget that he was a dead man walking. He wishes he could go back to peach and violet mornings under the bare spring sun, sit and sing with Jaemin in the fields instead of wondering if every stick snapping in the wind was the last sound he’d ever hear. 

“Don’t be complacent,” Jaemin mutters under his breath. The sentiment is gone.

“I’m not,” Donghyuck says. Dry leaves crack under his boots.

“You’ll die,” Jaemin continues, like he hadn’t heard Donghyuck. Sometimes he’s like this, pig-headed, bickering. To Donghyuck it’s almost the same as arguing with his reflection, except this one hits back, gets prickly sometimes, turns its nose up and won’t talk to him for days. It’s an essay on their similarities, their unwillingness to back down, to always be the one with the greatest one-up in their back pocket. Donghyuck lost this one before it began—there’s nothing in his back pocket except the trinket he’d taken from Jeno’s body, a whisker preserved in cloudy amber, something that won’t earn him anything except tainted recollections of a friend he’d barely known. 

The sobbing gets louder, step by step. It becomes clear that there's sounds woven inbetween, hiccups and wails more animal than human, each of them torn apart by the wind that begins to rush down the corridor of the trees. Each sob feels like it’s pulling at Donghyuck’s heart, trying to reach down his throat and pry it from his ribcage.

The blood comes first. It's less a trail and more of a river, wet footprints stumbling in an erratic fashion. He kneels down to inspect it and finds only one set of boots, slightly larger than his own. Beside them the ground is scarred by a long line of distrubed dirt, flattened with two furrows running through, like something had been dragged across it. Bloody handprints begin to appear the tree trunks. Smeared in long lines, some are darker, more defined, like their owner had stopped to rest for a moment. Donghyuck tells Jaemin as much, and Jaemin’s face hardens. He draws his sword, the gleam of the blade wicked even in the faint light filtering through the treetops.

“Let’s go,” he says.

The track is short, rough, no effort made to hide where its owner went. Soon the forest opens into a glen and he’s greeted by brilliant sunshine, pure white that sears spots of bruised colours into his retinas. He pulls the hood of his jacket down over his head, blinking furiously to try to adjust after the gloom of the woods.

It’s only as he begins to wade through the grass, knee length and wet with dew, that he finds the source of the sound, a figure slumped against a stump near the edge. Their head is the only part of them visible, and it’s down, dark hair failing over their face.

Donghyuck raises his bow as Jaemin steps out from behind him, calls out softly. 

“Are you okay?”

The boy wails and looks up, and Donghyuck recoils. 

The only sign that he might be human are the tear tracks carved like highways down his cheeks, the whites of his eyes floodlights amongst the glossy varnish of blood leaking from a gash on his forehead. There’s a heartbeat between seeing his face and the recognition that washes over Donghyuck, but as it hits he’s already lowering his bow and running. Blades of grass part like the Red Sea before him, and Donghyuck is calling Jisung's name, choking as he stumbles across the uneven ground, falls to his side shouting ‘no, no, no’.

Up close it's even more of a nightmare. It’s like he’s back in the desert all over again, tripping over the bodies of the other tributes, his vision blurred as he tried to spot Jaemin amongst the carnage. The smell of blood is sickening and heavy and it permeates his nostrils, sticks to the back of his throat, makes him gag and retch. It's smeared all over the ground, pools in the dirt, causes his trousers to stick to his skin as he crawls towards Jisung. The front of his jacket is sticky and shiny and his arms are the colour of bruised cherries, coated in a lacquer that cracks as he lifts the dark bundle in his arms helplessly. Donghyuck doesn’t know what belongs to him and what belongs to it. 

It. It’s a person. A body. Donghyuck hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it running towards him, doesn't want to look now, but he knows he has to. He already knows who the cannon was fired for.

Chenle's skin is the colour of fresh snow and his eyes are shut, his lips pale. There's blood on his eyelids, smeared across his forehead, fingerpainted on his cheeks in the shape of Jisung's hands. He looks almost peaceful, like he had on the first morning, when Donghyuck had woken up to find him asleep with Jisung curled up in his arms. There’s a faint hope inside of him that if he waits long enough, he’ll wake up, that the cannon was for someone else, some poor soul who ran out of water or ate poison berries. His throat closes up, vision swimming, and he bites down on it, suppresses the hiccups threatening to burst from his chest. Jaemin crouches beside him and reaches out a hand and Jisung recoils, pulls Chenle close to his chest and lets out a cry like a dying animal.

"Jisung," Jaemin says, soft. Donghyuck’s heart is lodged in his throat, choking him, denying him the words he wants desperately to say. Jisung shakes like a fever patient, and then coughs, dark red spittle dripping down his chin. "Hey."

Jisung’s eyes look wide and unfocused, but as Donghyuck shifts they come back to reality, laser in on him.

"Hey Jisung," Donghyuck says, finally managing a breath. He reaches out his hand, tentative. Jisung sobs but allows him to rest it on his shoulder. It’s sticky on his bare skin."It's okay. We won't hurt you."

“I know,” Jisung says. 

“Are you okay?”

Jisung shakes his head, sniffles. “I don’t think I can move anymore. Everything hurts.”

“It’s alright,” Donghyuck says. “It’s alright. We’ll get you fixed up."

"Chenle's dead, Donghyuck."

_ I know. _

"It's alright," Donghyuck repeats, because he doesn't know what else he's supposed to say. They never trained him for this. They taught him how to survive and how to kill, how to put on the best show possible, but they didn't tell him how to care for someone in their last moments, how to reassure them while they held the dead body of their best friend. How to say it was okay when it so obviously wasn't.

Jisung nods, sniffling. “I know.”

"What happened," Jaemin says, soft. Jisung shakes his head. 

"It was the girl from Eight. I think she was following us, up in the trees. She... she shot me.” He touches his stomach. The feathers of a crossbow bolt are barely visible amongst the fabric, buried so deep Donghyuck knows in an instant it’s unretrievable. He winces. “Chenle was asleep, and she dropped down and stabbed him," he starts to cry again, body wracked with sobs. Jaemin makes soothing coos, patiently waiting for him to calm down, running his hand up and down his arm. The tears that roll down Jisung’s cheeks are swirled with deep red like oil in water. They drop against Chenle’s chest in muted splashes. "She just stabbed him. Over and over." 

The wail he lets out is blood curdling, seems to saturate Donghyuck through to the bone, permeate every part of him and settle in the grooves of his ribcage. It's the cry of someone who's had everyone he's loved ripped from his hands, of a helpless child being forced to relive his worst moments. Jisung presses his face against Chenle's forehead and rocks back and forth. "Over and over,” he repeats, speech muffled. Silence seeps into the crack in the conversation, its flow broken only by Jisung’s sniffles and the sound of his teardrops. It’s a long moment before he composes himself, wipes away the dribble of blood that falls from the corner of his mouth.. “She knew I was alive, but she left me. Chenle couldn’t walk, but he asked to see the sky one last time. I wanted to do that much for him." 

He shakes Chenle, pulls him up in his arms and kisses his forehead. “You got to see the sky, Chenle. We got to see the sky." 

Donghyuck can't bear it, has to look away. A great cloud of birds rises from the treetops and heads towards the cornucopia, their shadows like fine brush strokes against the eggshell blue of the mid-afternoon. Jisung sobs softly, shuddering under Donghyuck's grip.

“It’s okay,” Jaemin says.

"I’m going to die," Jisung says. He coughs again. Jaemin goes to repeat himself and Jisung shakes his head, his smile delirious. “It’s okay, really. We were always dead, as soon as they chose us. Only one of us could ever win, and I’d never leave without him. I don’t think he’d let himself leave without me, either, as much as I ever wanted him to.” His eyes are beginning to cloud over, like fog rolling over a dark ocean. "I just want him back," Jisung says. He lefts Chenle in his arms, draws him closer to him and cradles him. "I just want him back."

The moment sits, drops into the space between them like a stone in a lake, sinking downwards. The ensuing pause is pregnant, filled with potential, filled with fear, with helplessness, until Jaemin stands and draws his sword from his belt. He offers it to Jisung, handle first. 

The tip is pointed directly at his stomach, and in a moment of madness Donghyuck thinks Jisung could kill him if he wanted to, push it back and run him through. "Do you want to do it?" Jaemin asks. He doesn’t need to say what it is he’s asking, Jisung understands, laughs.

"I can't."

Jaemin doesn’t skip a beat. "I'll do it, then.” 

There’s no hesitation. He’s already thought about this, already made up his mind. He wonders if Jisung ever even had the option.

"You don't have to," Donghyuck says. "I can."

"We both know you can't,” Jaemin says. “You're not a killer." 

You aren't either, Donghyuck thinks, but he swallows it. The sympathy in Jaemin’s words is barely veiled, drips through like humidity on a midsummer day. In any other situation Donghyuck would bristle at the hint of perceived weakness, but here he has no fight left, not towards Jaemin, not towards Jisung, not towards anyone except the people who put them here—the Capitol, all the psychopathic viewers who treat them like chess pieces in their little game.

"Okay," he nods. Jaemin's mouth forms a thin line. "Jisung," Donghyuck turns to him. A dribble of blood runs down his chin. He looks small, like a child clutching his favourite toy to stave off the nightmares. He **is** a child, Donghyuck realises. They all are. Donghyuck’s heart wrenches with the helplessness of the situation again, with the knowledge there’s truly nothing he can do. That he’s a dead man walking, and these are his last days, made to fight for a week’s worth of entertainment. It’s disgusting. A waste of life. "It’s okay. You'll see Chenle soon."

Jisung scrunches his nose and sniffs. "I know."

"You're a good kid." 

He kisses the top of his head, between the dried blood and clumps of mud. The eyes of the world are on him and he feels their weight, feels it as he smooths Chenle's hair over his temple. He tries not to focus on the fact that his skin is already cold.

“You too, Chenle.”

Donghyuck stands and turns away, doesn’t look back to watch Jaemin say his goodbye. Tears flow unbidden down his cheeks and he wants to be strong, wants to be strong even though he knows he’s already shown he’s the weak one when he decided he didn’t have the guts to give mercy. Charcoal smudges the horizon, the sunshine turned to storm clouds.

Another sob. Distant. Cold wind curls around him, and the birds have stopped singing. He takes a long breath, revels in the way it rushes down his throat and fills the bellows of ish chest. It tastes like crushed wildflowers, and he thinks if he closed his eyes he could pretend he was home, pretend he was standing in the woods after the spring rains, just waiting for Jaemin to come back with his bow so they could hunt again.

There's a dull thud, and then the cannon sounds.

  



End file.
